


Blue on Blue

by Snickfic



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Nonnies Made Me Do It, Post-Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-08
Updated: 2018-09-08
Packaged: 2019-07-08 09:53:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15927995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snickfic/pseuds/Snickfic
Summary: Loki inhaled, exhaled, and let the winter come out—just a little, the first spiraling frost across a window pane. His arm darkened, the flush draining from it until it was blue. And there on the inside of his wrist, in brilliant gold, was the match to Thor’s rune.





	Blue on Blue

Thor leaned against the countertop, brooding in one-eyed silence. He held one of those _weird fruits_ the icebox was so well stocked with. An aphrodisiac, it turned out, although it’d taken an orgy breaking out in a corner of the feast hall before anyone had realized it.

Loki _had_ warned them about touching things on the ship. Oh, well. He thought perhaps grieving, hungry refugees had better excuse than most for disregarding his advice. “Considering a midnight snack?” he asked, settling next to Thor. Thor huffed softly and shook his head. He turned the fruit over in his hands. It was purple with really unsightly orange spots—hardly appetizing in its own right. 

And there, just up the inside Thor’s arm, was his mark: an intricate rune as blue as a Jotun. Loki had coveted one like it—well, not _just_ like it—for most of his life. He held up his own wrist for inspection. It was blank, as always it had been. Nearly always.

Somewhere far deeper inside Loki than his heart or gut, there was a place that was very cold. In his youth Loki had imagined it some kind of flaw in his character; then he’d gone to Jotunheim and discovered worse. Since then he’d fallen into the Void and out of it again, had been run through with a Svartalf blade, had been thrust through a wormhole, and yet still the winters of Jotunheim remained in him.

He inhaled, exhaled, and let the winter come out—just a little, the first spiraling frost across a window pane. His arm darkened, the flush draining from it until it was blue. And there on the inside of his wrist, in brilliant gold, was the match to Thor’s rune.

Thor sucked in a breath. He knew, of course; Loki had screamed this at him as he’d screamed many other wrongs endured. Until now, Thor had never seen it. He said, “It’s very beautiful.”

“You _would_ think that, seeing as it looks just like something of yours.” But Loki said the words mildly, without bite.

They looked at it together, and no one moved, and no one spoke.

Finally, Loki said, “You may touch it if you like. It shouldn’t—I don’t think the cold will harm you.” Surely not when he’d allowed so little of that true self to surface. Surely not his _soulmate._ It was a sign of something, perhaps, that he could muster this small measure of hope in the justice of the universe.

Thor had gone so still, it seemed he might have given up breathing altogether. He set the unappealing fruit on the countertop behind him. He reached out until his fingers brushed the back of Loki’s arm, his touch hot but not painful. He stroked across the mark with his thumb. Was it a shadow of Thor’s own soul that Loki felt? The gossamer unbreaking thread that tied one soul to another? A phantom stirred up in Loki’s chest by his own anticipation? It was warm, whatever it was: a late summer’s breeze to counter Jotunheim’s chill.

“May I?” Loki said, his voice really quite steady, in the circumstances.

It took Thor a moment to catch Loki’s meaning, and then he hurriedly lifted his arm for Loki’s inspection. Loki rested his fingers against Thor’s mark, just to compare the color of them. Not quite a perfect match, but then this was not fully his natural shade. He pressed blue on blue. Thor shivered.

Loki suddenly wished very much to snatch his hand away, but he wished even more to avoid the hurt Thor would try to hide if he did. Instead Loki brushed across the mark once, twice, and then slowly let go. 

And so it was done: not any of the formal ceremonies, only acknowledgment of the truth, which bound more surely than any law or custom. “What can the Norns have been thinking?” Loki said. His heart raced. He felt shocky as if he’d sustained a battle injury, though when he looked at his hands, they were still—both the hand from Jotunheim and the one from Asgard.

“Only they can say,” Thor said. He sounded a little winded. “What—what do you wish to do now, brother?”

“ _Brother_ ,” Loki repeated, scoffing.

Ah. There, fleetingly, was some of that hurt Loki had hoped to avoid.

“Brother,” Loki said again, softer, “truly I don’t know.” A dull ache had begun to build near his elbow, where blue skin shaded into pale. He let the blue fade away, and with it the mark. 

Saying nothing, Thor once again lightly clasped Loki’s wrist and gently stroked the spot where the mark had been. Only now the mark was not there, and his touch felt altogether different. It felt molten. It felt like intent.

“Thor,” Loki said, but he had no words to continue.

Thor lifted his gaze to Loki’s. “Whatever you want, however much or little. You need only say the word.”

“You would accept this so easily? With your _brother_ , whose mark you cannot even see except when—when—”

“You call this easy?” Thor said. Against all odds, he was smiling, full and genuine. Laugh lines rayed from the corners of his eye. He let go of Loki’s hand; dropped his own to his side. “All this, all these years? I call it very hard work.” 

Loki laughed in disbelief. He turned and stared across the narrow galley, unseeing. In the years since he first discovered his mark, as he drifted off to sleep, he’d sometimes let himself imagine things that he could never admit to in daylight. Fancies had floated past him like colorful ships on a canal, as if on journeys of their own, nothing to do with him.

He would like to kiss Thor, he thought. Start there. Discover the prickle of Thor’s beard, which past partners had laughingly complained of. Feel the heat of Thor’s breath in his mouth. And then—

 _However much or little_. Let no one ever fault Loki for smallness of ambition. But for now he only brushed his knuckles against Thor’s and let them rest there. He felt as much as heard the heaving rise and fall of his brother’s breath.

And the ship flew on.

[end]


End file.
